Dracula Lives! #2 - Marvel

I wanna catch up a little bit with Dracula Lives! since it's been so criminally under-represented here, and I don't want the count sneaking into my house at night and putting the bite on me.

This Warren-esque cover is by Penalva, someone whose work I'm not terribly familiar with. But its got everything you need for a Dracula cover: Drac looking menacing, a sexy woman threatened...what else is there?

Like the debut issue, this second volume features an assortment of new work, reprint tales, and text features. We start out with "That Dracula May Live Again!", by Marv Wolfman and Neal Adams. And, as you can see by the astonishing splash page, Neal was, as they say, bringing it:




























...I mean, wow. And every one of the thirteen pages is as good as this one. This story is basically the Secret Origin of Dracula, and its a compelling tale, brilliantly told.

Next is a reprint tale, drawn entirely by Joe Sinnott, called "Vampires Drink Deep!", which is goofy fun, and comes as a nice change of pace from the intensity of the opening feature.

Third is a text fiction piece written by Chris Claremont, and then is "The Terror That Stalked Castle Dracula!" by Steve Gerber, my pal Tony Isabella, and the unusual art team of Jim Starlin and Syd Shores. This is another one of those stories that exemplifies, how do you write a story with Pure Evil as your main protagonist and sort-of hero? Easy, have him take on someone worse...the Nazis!

"One Corpse...One Vote!" is another reprint tale, this time by Stan "Ok, Marvin, I'll create this superhero book and then I'm outta here" Lee and Fred Kida, which features zombies eating a politician at the end...write your own joke here.

"The Voodoo Queen of New Orleans" by Roy Thomas, Gene Colan, and Dick Giordano, is quite a sexy tale, about an old gypsy woman who becomes young and actually tried to seduce Dracula! Women were different back in the seventies.

A great, solid issue, a definite ramp up from the first--the Wolfman/Adams tale alone was worth the price. Dracula does indeed live!